MARCIONITES, a denomination in the second century; so called from Marcion, successor of Cerdo, who made several additions to his doctrines. He taught men to believe in another God, superior to the Creator, who was the supreme God, the Father, invisible, inaccessible, and perfectly good. The Creator, the God of the jews, made this lower and visible world. The supreme God, the Father, had also a world of his making; but better than this, immaterial, and invisible. For he supposed if a good God had made this world, there would have been neither sin nor misery; but all men would have been holy and happy. He taught that Jesus was the Son of the good God, who took the exterior form of a man; and, without being born, or gradually growing up to the full stature of a man, he shewed himself at once in Galilee as a man grown. He also supposed, that at the first moment of his appearance in the world, he was completely fitted to enter on his great work; and that he immediately assumed the character of a Saviour. According to the doctrine of this denomination, Christ had the appearance of a human body, though not the reality. They founded this opinion on angels appearing, under the old testament, in bodily shapes, and conversing with men, and on Phil. ii. 6, 7, 8; because, they observe the apostle says, Being in the form of God, he emptied himself, and took the form of a servant-the appearance, not the reality. Marcion acknowledged that the prophets of the Creator had promised a Saviour to the jewish nation, who should deliver them out of the hands of their enemies, and restore them to freedom; but pretended that this deliverer was not the Son of God, and that the oracles of the old testament did not agree to Jesus Christ. lieved that Hence he bethere are two Christs; one who appeared in the time of Tiberius, for the salvation of all nations; another, the restorer of the jewish state, who is yet to come. They supposed that the souls of the virtuous would enjoy eternal happiness with the good God and their Saviour, after their departure from this world: but they denied the resurrection of the body. Marcion altogether rejected the old testament, as proceeding from the Creator, who was, in his estimation, void of goodness. He received but eleven books of the new testament; and of the gospels only that of Luke, and that with many alterations and he rejected all the parts of the new testament which contain quotations from the old. The manners of this denomination were virtuous, and they had many martyrs.* : MARCOSIANS, a branch of Gnostics in the second century their leaders were Marc and Colobarsus. They taught that the supreme God did not consist of a trinity, but a quaternity; to wit, the Ineffable, Silence, the Father, and Truth. They held two principles, denied the reality of Christ's sufferings, and the resurrection of the body. Their doctrine concerning the aions was the same with the Valentinians. See Valentinians. Marc maintained that the plenitude and perfection of truth resided in the greek alphabet, and alleged that as the reason why Christ was called the Alpha and Omega.† MARONITES, certain eastern christians who inhabit near Mount Libanus, in Syria. The name is derived either from a town in the country, called Maronia, or from St. Maron, who built a monastery there in the fifth century. This denomination retained the opinions of the Monothelites till the twelfth century, when, abandoning and renouncing the doctrine of one will in Christ, they were readmitted in the year 1182 to the communion of the Roman church. As to the particular tenets of the Maronites, before their reconciliation to the church of Rome, they observed Saturday as well as the Sabbath. They held that all souls were created together, and that those of good men do not enter into heaven till after the resurrection. They added other opinions which were similar to those of the Greek church.‡ See Greek Church. MASSALIANS, a denomination which arose in the fourth century. They derived their name from a hebrew word signifying prayer, it being their distinguishing tenet that a man is to pray without ceasing in the literal sense of the words. Hereupon they shunned not only the society of other men, but renounced all the exterior part of religion, the usage of the sacraments, and the fasts; dwelt with their wives and children in the woods and forests, that they might wait solely and * Lardner's Works, vol. ix. pp. 369–393. Mosheim, vol, ii. p. 37, Dr. Joseph Priestley. A short view of the distinguishing articles in his system, and a few of the arguments which he uses in defence of his sentiments, are imperfectly delineated in the following summary.t continually on prayer. They imagined that two souls resided in man; the one good, the other evil and taught that it was impossible to expel the evil demon by any other mean, than by constant prayer and singing of hymns; and that when this malignant spirit 1. That man is no more was cast out, the pure mind than what we now see of him : returned to God, and was his being commences at the again united to the divine time of his conception, or essence whence it had been perhaps at an earlier period. separated. They boasted of The corporeal and mental having perpetual revelations faculties, inhering in the same and visions, and these they substance, grow, ripen, and expected particularly in the decay together; and whennight. They added many opi- ever the system is dissolved, nions which bear a manifest it continues in a state of disresemblance to the Manichean solution, till it shall pleasesystem, and are derived from that almighty Being who callthe same source, even from ed it into existence, to restore the tenets of the oriental phi- it to life again. For if the losophy. The authors of this mental principle were, in its denomination were certain own nature, immaterial and monks of Mesopotamia.* immortal, all its peculiar faculties would be so too; whereas we see that every faculty of the mind, without MATERIALISTS, or PHY. SICAL NECESSARIANS, the followers of the celebrated * Mosheim, vol. i. pp. 350, 351. Formey's Eccles, Hist, vol. i. p. 82. + Dr. Priestley considers man as a being consisting of what is called matter, disposed in a certain manner. At death the parts of this material substance are so disarranged, that the powers of perception and thought, which depend upon this arrangement, cease. At the resurrection they will be re-arranged in the same, or in a similar manner as before; and consequently, the powers of perception and thought will be restored. Death, with its concomitant putrefaction and dispersion of parts, is only a decomposition. What is decomposed may be recomposed by the being who first composed it so that, in the most proper sense of the word, the same body which dies shall rise again, not with every thing adventitious and extraneous, as what we receive by nutrition; but with the same stamina, or those particles which really belonged to the germ of the organical body: these will be collected and revivified at the resurrection. exception, is liable to be impaired, and even to become wholly extinct, before death. Since, therefore, all the faculties of the mind, separately taken, appear to be mortal, the substance, or principle, in which they exist, must be pronounced mortal too. Thus we might conclude that the body. was mortal, from observing that all the separate senses and limbs were liable to decay and perish. This system gives a real value to the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, which is peculiar to revelation; on which alone the sacred writers build all our hope of future life and it explains the uniform language of the scriptures, which speak of one day of judgment for all mankind; and represent all the rewards of virtue, and all the punishments of vice, as taking place at that awful day, and not before. In the scriptures, the heathens are represented as without hope, and all mankind as perishing at death, if there be no resurrection of the dead. The apostle Paul asserts, in 1 Cor. xv. 16, that if the dead rise not, then is not Christ risen; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins: then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. And again, ver. 32, If the dead rise not, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. In the whole discourse, he does not even mention the doctrine of happiness or misery without the body. If we search the scriptures for passages expressive of the state of man at death, we find such declarations as expressly exclude any trace of sense, thought, or enjoyment. See Psal. vi. 5. Job xiv. 7, &c. 2. That there is some fixed law of nature respecting the will, as well as the other powers of the mind, and every thing else in the constitution of nature; and consequently that it is never determined without some real or apparent cause foreign to itself; i. e. without some motive of choice; or, that motives influence us in some definite and invariable manner; so that every volition, or choice, is constantly regulated and determined by what precedes it :: and this constant determination of mind, according to the motives presented to it, is what is meant by its necessary. determination.* This being admitted to be fact, there will be a necessary connexion be *The term voluntary is not opposed to necessary, but only to involuntary; and nothing can be opposed to necessary but contingent. For a voluntary motion may be regulated by certain rules, as much as a mechanical one; tween all things past, present, and to come, in the way of proper cause and effect, as much in the intellectual as in the natural world: so that, according to the established laws of nature, no event could have been otherwise than it has been, is, or is to be; and therefore all things past, present, and to come, are precisely what the Author of nature really intended them to be, and has made provision for.* To establish this conclusion, nothing is necessary but that throughout all nature, the same consequences should invariably result from the same circumstances. For if this be admitted, it will necessarily follow, that at the commencement of any system, since the several parts of it, and their respective situations, were ap pointed by the Deity, the first change would take place according to a certain rule established by himself, the result of which would be a new situation; after which, the same laws continuing, another change would succeed, according to the same rules, and so on for ever: every new situation invariably leading to another, and every event, from the commencement to the termination of the system, being strictly connected; so that, unless the fundamental laws of the system were changed, it would be impossible that any event should have been otherwise than it was. In all these cases, the circumstances preceding any change are called the causes of that change; and since a determi and if it be regulated by any certain rules or laws, it is as necessary as any mechanical motion whatever. To suppose the most perfectly voluntary choice to be made without regard to the laws of nature; so that, with the same inclination, and the same views of things presented to us, we might be even voluntarily disposed to chuse either of two different things at the same moment of time, is just as impossible as that an involuntary or mechanical motion should depend upon no certain laws or rule, or that any other effect should exist without an adequate cause. If the mind be as constantly determined by the influence of motives, as a stone is determined to fall to the ground by the influence of gravity, we are constrained to conclude that the cause in the one acts as necessarily as in the other. The scheme of philosophical necessity, as stated by an intimate friend and warm admirer of Dr. Priestley's, is," "That every thing is pre-determined by the divine Being; that whatever has been, must have been; and that whatever will be, must be-that all events are pre-ordained by infinite wisdom and unlimited goodness-that the will, in all its determinations, is governed by the state of mind--that this state of mind is in every instance determined by the Deity; and that there is a continued chain of causes and effects, of motives and actions, inseparably connected, and originating from the condition in which we are brought into existence by the Author of our being." See Essay on Philosophical Necessity, by Alexander Crombie, |